Politico | Alex Isenstadt & Daniel Strauss

‘Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of liberty,’ the Kentucky senator said.

Rand Paul dropped out of the 2016 president race on Wednesday, short on cash and support, two days after finishing with under 5 percent in the Iowa caucuses — less than one quarter of the support his father had drawn four years earlier.

The Kentucky senator, who pitched his libertarian-infused brand of conservatism as transformational for the Republican Party, will exit the national stage and instead run for reelection to the Senate. His moment in the 2016 campaign never materialized.

“Brushfires of Liberty were ignited, and those will carry on, as will I,” Paul said in a statement.

Steve Munisteri, a senior adviser to Paul, told POLITICO that the senator called him after the Iowa caucuses to ask his thoughts on continuing the campaign. “The going endgoal was if we got a top five we would go on. Then Rand reflected on it and he called to get my advice and my advice was that he not go on,” Munisteri said of the Tuesday morning call.

Paul told senior staff about his decision on Tuesday. Other staff were notified Tuesday evening and the entire Paul campaign was told via a conference call on Wednesday morning at about 8:45, according to a campaign source. In that call the Kentucky senator talked about smaller government, continuing his fight for “liberty” and the Fourth Amendment.

For months, Paul struggled to gain traction or garner attention in a race that has been dominated by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Paul hadn’t registered in double digits in any national poll since May, after he had led some surveys in 2014 and had been declared the “most interesting man” in Republican politics.

Paul had initially been viewed as a stronger contender than his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 on a narrow libertarian appeal. The younger Paul had hope to build on the libertarian grassroots base that had poured tens of millions of dollars into the elder Paul’s campaigns and expand it to more mainstream Republicans.

In the end, he was able to do neither.

Rand Paul struggled to raise serious campaign cash, from both big donors and small ones. He had entered 2016 essentially broke, with $1.27 million in the bank and nearly $250,000 in unpaid bills and some of the remaining money unavailable because it was earmarked to be used only in a general election. Paul had burned through more money than he raised in each of his last two full quarters as a candidate, when others, notably rival Sen. Ted Cruz, were spending far more and still able to pad their political warchests. His supporting super PACs ended the year with a little more than $4 million in cash on hand.

Paul is one of the GOP’s leading non-interventionist voices. But with increasing instability in the Middle East, terror in Paris and an attack in San Bernardino, Paul’s risk-averse brand of foreign policy has fallen out of favor, as the Republican Party has returned to its roots as proponents of a more muscular and aggressive international posture.

A senior Paul aide said the campaign suffered from not only rise of ISIL, but also the rise of Trump. “Trump got in, Trump zoomed ahead, we collapsed, and he had a massive impact in caging our people from us,” the top aide said. “And that, combined with this foreign policy environment, when Rand was more flavor of the month a year ago, it was before they were beheading people in the Middle East and that just really altered the conversation, the dynamic on those issues.”

While candidates like Trump, Cruz and Marco Rubio — the top three finishers in Iowa — became better liked as the campaign wore on, Paul was the opposite.

By the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll in Iowa, Paul’s favorability had plummeted underwater, with 41 percent likely caucus-goers having an unfavorable opinion of him and only 40 percent favorable. That represents a remarkable swing from the previous January poll, when his favorability was 65 percent and unfavorability 25 percent. He finished fifth in Iowa — ahead of Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Chris Christie — but was projected to do much worse in next week’s New Hampshire primary.

Paul’s poor showing in Iowa marked a turning point, multiple Paul campaign aides said, painting a dire picture for moving forward.

“Third for sure, fourth maybe, but fifth wasn’t [viable],” one campaign aide said.

“We did not see a surge in fundraising on that fifth place finish,” one of Paul’s senior strategists said. “Some money came in. You keep paying bills and live a little bit off the land but to what point? We took fifth. What then? We take 9th? After New Hampshire, South Carolina — that was always going to be a disaster state no matter what position the campaign was in. So the calendar was getting worse for us in the short term.”

Paul suffered another big blow last month when he was relegated to the undercard of the sixth GOP debate. He boycotted the event, saying he was running a “first-tier” campaign. While he made it back on the main stage for last week’s debate, he failed to make much of an impact.

He was also extremely unlikely to qualify for Saturday night’s nationally televised debate in Manchester, N.H., according to criteria announced last week by ABC News. Paul failed to finish in the top three in Iowa and isn’t in the top six in polls conducted among Republicans nationally (he’s tenth) or in New Hampshire (he’s seventh), according to POLITICO’s calculations. Paul’s standing in the polls wasn’t likely to change before ABC’s deadline of Thursday at 5 p.m.

He now plans to turn his attention to his Kentucky Senate race. “Although, today I will suspend my campaign for President, the fight is far from over” he said in Wednesday’s statement. “I will continue to carry the torch for Liberty in the United States Senate and I look forward to earning the privilege to represent the people of Kentucky for another term.”

Paul drew a serious Democratic challenger, wealthy Lexington Mayor Jim Gray,last week, increasing pressure from national GOP officials to focus at home on his reelection bid. Though Gray is certainly an underdog, Republicans do not want to spend money in such a red state when they are protecting far more vulnerable incumbents in states like Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio.

Given his limited support, Paul’s departure is unlikely to significantly alter the contours of the remaining presidential contest, though Cruz, who had competed most aggressively for Paul’s libertarian base, is poised to swallow up at least some of his supporters.

In a radio interview on Wednesday, Cruz described Paul as “a friend” and “a very good man” and said he hoped to win over his supporters. “Rand has been a tremendous voice for liberty in a sense that his father was for many, many decades,” Cruz said.

Rubio, speaking to reporters after a town hall in Bow, New Hampshire, said he thought Paul “ran a good race,” though he disagreed with him on “a lot of issues.”

“He’s a true believer on issues of limited government and liberty issues, and I respect him for it,” Rubio said.

“I’d love to have Rand’s support,” Rubio replied when asked if he would seek an endorsement. “I haven’t spoken to him.”

“I also know that he is also probably now going to focus on his Senate reelection in Kentucky and we have to make sure he is reelected,” he added.